TRACK 8: "Silly Sally & The Phantom of the Opera"
For all you goofies and goonies ...
A disabled Star Wars veteran at the counter graveyard time
Coping with his French fries, his fried chicken, his fried mind
Just another gutter guru in his cross-eyed tortured bliss
Wondering how he got to Sambo's and how it came to this
CHORUS
So here's to all the loonies and the fallen acid heads
The goofies and the goonies and to all the living dead
God must have loved the crazies, there's so many in His plan
But did He make a brain-damaged woman
For each brain-damaged man?
(Sally!)
A wind-chapped girl sat in a booth, arm resting on her pack
Not knowing where she's coming from, not caring to look back
She'd found a motel for the price of coffee, she'd stay at Sambo's ‘til the dawn
Not knowing where she's going, she just knew that she was gone
(Repeat Chorus)
He lurched over to her table just to bum a match
He had no way of knowing then his love was soon to hatch
But there was something in her bloodshot eyes that he had never known
And he knew right then he could no longer bear to face life all alone
Nine cups of coffee later and seven cigarettes
They just stared at one another, neither one had spoken yet
Til he finally said "I love you, come, with me and we'll escape."
And when he grasped her little hand she started screaming
"RAAAAAPE!!!!!!"
(Repeat Chorus)
copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)
(Written 1980)
True confession: “Sally” once spent the night at my house.
No, it wasn’t some illicit or romantic liaison. It was in the summer of 1979. My wife and were both working at Coronado Bowling Center – me manning the front desk while Pam worked at the snack bar.
(Narrative detour: A good memory just crossed my brain. Pam’s boss, a lady named Lilly Romero, made the best green chile Frito pies in the history of western civilization. I used to eat at least one a night while we worked at the bowling alley. It was a bright spot during a mostly bad period in my work life.)
One night at Coronado, a haggard ruddy-faced woman came in and plopped herself down at a seat in the snack bar area.
At some point, Pam struck up a conversation with her, and soon before closing time, she asked me if we could let this drifter stay on our couch for the night. Having been a lonesome hitchhiker myself a few years before, I said sure.
“Sally,” whose real name I forgot years ago, was very talkative. Like most hitchhikers, she had lots of stories of the road.
But several of them had the same dark theme: Some guy would stop to give her a lift, “and then he raped me.”
She those words, “and then he raped me” with less emotion than someone saying, “and then a fly landed on my shirt.”
I’m not discounting the possibility that this poor woman was raped, perhaps multiple times, as she hitchhiked across our Christian nation.
But there was something about her manner, including the nonchalant way she’d say “and then he raped me” that made her seem delusional.
I’m well aware that she could have been a rape survivor as well as a delusional individual. It’s possible that the two could be connected.
And it’s possible that, writing this song in my mid-20s, I’m guilty of indulging in manchild humor that wouldn’t be acceptable today.
Christ! I’m probably a jerk!
This might be a good time for a music break. Here’s one for “Sally,” the late Simon Stokes covering a Woody Guthrie song that I think a wind-chapped girl could relate to:
Another strange thing about “Sally” we learned that night: She had a bizarre one-way relationship with actor Richard Dean Anderson.
Yes, she had an unrequited crush on MacGyver!
She described some of the letters she’d written him and showed us one she was working on. There was nothing salacious or ominous about it --basically just mundanely describing her day to this t.v. star she’d never met.
She just said that seeing him on tv made her think he was a nice guy with a good vibe who’d understand her – even if he never wrote back.
We had no way of knowing then that around the same time she was writing letters to Richard Dean Anderson, some deluded kid named John Hinkley was writing letters to Jodi Foster…
Again, there was nothing threatening in the writing “Sally” showed us or in the way she described her feelings for Anderson. But she was sure he and she were connected … on some plane of reality.
“Sally” thanked us and left the next morning. I think either Pam or I gave her a ride closer to downtown. I thought I’d probably seen the last of her.
But no …
One late, drunken night a couple of weeks after “Sally” crashed at my swinging pad, I was sitting alone at Sambo’s, which used to be at the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Michael’s Drive.
Sambo’s had become my go-to after-last-call hangout during its early years in Santa Fe. For that I blame my old high school pal Jake, who had been a devoted Sambo’s regular for years down in Las Cruces.
Jake moved back to Santa Fe for several months, supposedly to help the new Sambo’s crew – some of whom had worked at the Cruces store – get set up here. I never was sure exactly what Jake did for Sambo’s when he was here – except drink tons of coffee and munch on hamburgers.
Jake got me in the habit of going to Sambo’s. And he actually helped get Pam a job there as a waitress before she started working the bowling alley snack bnar.
But I was alone that night in Sambo’s when I noticed “Sally” in a booth across the room. Arm resting on her pack, I suppose.
My first thought: Christ I hope she doesn’t see me!
Enter The Phantom!
I’m not exactly sure what “The Phantom’s” real story was. And I never called him that until I wrote this song. But he was one creepy looking guy.
He was tall, disheveled and walked around like a zombie with faraway expression in his eyes.
And he always wore a long shabby black dress jacket, which looked as if he’d slept in it.
I used to joke, “He’s wearing the same jacket he was buried in.”
A decade or so later, I think maybe Bob Dylan wrote a song about him.
I used to frequently see him walking around DeVargas Center Mall back when I worked at Stag Tobacconist there.
He lurched over to the counter and sat down.
A perverse idea popped into my head: What if these two got together …
Finishing my french fries, I slipped the surly bonds of Sambo’s soon after “The Phantom” arrived. So I don’t know if these two actually made contact in real life.
But when I got home and told Pam that I’d seen our former house guest at the coffee shop where I saw another local street character, I knew there was a song to be made.
So I “borrowed” a melody from Johnny Horton (but I let Johnny keep the “mushes”) …
But, slightly more subtly, I also lifted from one of my favorite John Prine songs, “Donald and Lydia,” where two unlikely lovers get together, at least on some plane of reality.
Yep, that’s why I announce the second verse with “Sally!”
When writing songs, often the melody, or some version of it, comes before I write the actual lyrics. This was the case with “Silly Sally & The Phantom of the Opera.”
And after writing the lyrics to fit my basic idea (or Johnny Horton’s basic idea or whatever), I realized that to tell the story, there were a couple of places where I had to cram an ungodly number of syllables into a line.
The most obvious example is “She'd found a motel for the price of coffee, she'd stay at Sambo's ‘til the dawn …”
And to a lesser extent: “And he knew right then he could no longer bear to face life all alone…”
At first I played around with trying to condense the lyrics to make them fit better. Then I realized it probably would be funnier to just go ahead and speed up my vocals in those – maybe suggesting late-night Sambo’s coffee jitters.
Sometimes, when performing “Silly Sally” live, I’d even lean into this absurd bumpiness, changing “seven cigarettes” to “17 cigarettes.”
One lyric in this song that today, which I’m not sure actually works, are the very first words to the song: “A disabled Star Wars veteran.”
Keep in mind that this was written shortly after the first Star Wars movie was released, long before the 117 sequels, prequels, etc. came to be. The idea was that this guy was damaged in some inter-galactic battle, or, more likely, an inner-galactic battle.
But I’m afraid it might have made some folks think they were about to be subjected to some lame Star Wars parody.
Oh well …
As recorded with The Whereabouts, this tune was given a snappy country-rock backdrop, with a New Riders of the Purple Sage vibe.
As he did on “Cook Yer Enchiladas,” Mike Roybal again got to show off his mastery of the eat-shit bassline, while brother Jack’s busy guitar parts help establish that coffee-jitters effect I spoke of.
And the same folks that howled on “Wolfboy” – sister Mary, Tom Dillon and Alec Walling – also provided the background chorus of “Silly Sally” – Mary shrieking the dark punchline.
Now enjoy my song:
Credits:
Steve Terrell, lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar
Jack Clift: lead guitar, producer
Mike Roybal: bass
David Valdez: drums:
Tom Dillon, Alec Walling, Mary Kyle: background vocals